50 Film Classics in a Box: Truffaut, Kurosawa and more

Janus Films has spent the last 50 years bring­ing clas­sic for­eign films to Amer­i­can audi­ences, expos­ing them to the works of Ing­mar Bergman, Fed­eri­co Felli­ni, Jean-Luc Godard, Aki­ra Kuro­sawa, and François Truf­faut, among oth­ers. To cel­e­brate its half-cen­tu­ry anniver­sary, the film dis­tri­b­u­tion com­pa­ny has done some­thing pret­ty remark­able. It has released on DVD a col­lec­tion of 50 clas­sic films, which include Black Orpheus (Camus), M (Fritz Lang), The 400 Blows (Truf­faut), Grand Illu­sion (Renoir), Sev­en Samu­rai (Kuro­sawa), The Sev­enth Seal (Bergman), La Stra­da (Felli­ni), and The 39 Steps (Hitch­cock). You’ll love the Essen­tial Art House: 50 Years of Janus Films if you’re a diehard film buff, but not if you’re light in the wal­let. Even when bought at a dis­count of $650, the col­lec­tion still runs a hefty hunk of change. But it’s noth­ing that a home equi­ty loan can’t fix.